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Tumu Crisis and the Weakness of the Military System of Ming Dynasty

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Tumu Crisis and the Weakness of the Military System of Ming Dynasty Vol. 5, No. 6 Asian Social Science Tumu Crisis and the Weakness of the Military System of Ming Dynasty Longfei Feng Business School of Saint Louis University, USA E-mail: [email protected] Abstract In the year of 1449, Ming lost the battle against the Oirats in Tumu Bao due to its poor military system. In this article, the history of the Tumu Crisis and the military system of Ming dynasty were systematically studied. The article, First of all, analyzed the weakness of the military system of Ming from five aspects, and concluded that the main problems were the lower social statue of the army and a serial unrealistic regulation. Following that, the article explained how the military system caused the Tumu Crisis. It is found that the low quality of the military personnel caused by the army family system, the inefficient supply system, the war-weary attitude and the poor leadership were the main reasons for losing the battle. Keywords: Ming dynasty, Tumu Crisis, Military system, Army family system, Supply system, War-weary attitude, Leadership Introduction The Ming Dynasty is a time that Han Chinese ruled China again after the Mongolia Alien conquest. As a society had intrinsic atmosphere and valued peace and knowledge, this dynasty made its military system very careful and conservative. This military system was made to keep the society stable and had no ambition to expend. But out of the expectation of the system-maker, the system had never given the peaceful environment for our dynasty. This article analyzed the problems of the military system of Ming Dynasty and studied a military crisis of Ming Dynasty in the year of 1449 as a case. 1. The Analysis of the Military System of Ming The military system of Ming was founded during the ruling time of Hongwu Emperor and Yongle Emperor. This military system guided Chinese military organization and military actions until the end of Ming Dynasty in the year of 1644. In my point of view, this military system was founded with the ideology known as ‘‘value the intellectual, and despise the martial’’ and with a lot of regulations which were alienated from reality. And after this system came into force, there wasn’t any successful reform of it during the following 270 years. This military system made the efficiency in military very low and led to the defeats of some crucial battles, and finally, this system put an end to this Dynasty. Firstly, the strong political inclination to the civil servants made a negative situation to the military personnel. In the Ming government, comparing with civil servants, the military personnel always had the lower status, a reason was that the civil servants who selected by the Imperial Examinations always regard the military personnel with contempt or condescension. In the early years of Ming, the position of commander-in-chief was abolished by the Hongwu Emperor because of his afraid of its great power. Since then, there was no senior position offered for the military personnel in the bureaucracy system. The highest military officials were Generals which located in 83 military distinctions all over the country. And these Generals must obey the command of the Beijing cabinet and the Defense Minister which were controlled by the civil servants. What’s more, the military officials even had no right to dispatch their soldiers without the agreement of the local civil servants, and the supplies for the army were also provided by the local governments. This system was founded by the Hongwu Emperor to defang the military forces and ensure the military officials would have no power to threat to the central government. All in all, the low social statue of the military personnel led to the low level of the military operations and low quality of the soldiers. Secondly, Ming government always hold a passive position towards the war, it seldom tried to take the initiative position to attack its enemies. The reasons of this phenomenon are complex. On the one hand, it was because after the 12 Asian Social Science June, 2009 ruling of the alien Mongolia government, the feeling of disgrace made the personality of Han Chinese intrinsic and conservative. On the other hand, what’s more important, to ensure the stability of its dominion of China, the Ming government tried its best to avoid war because the war always causes social unrest. As the war always cost a lot of money and made a heavy burden on the common people, the government always wanted to end the war when the military conflicts wasn’t serious to reduce the civil stress.(Note 1) This passive position always made the government lost the favorable strategic situation and made the negative influence for the generals made the military decisions. Thirdly, Ming used the “Army Family System” to find the soldiers of its troops. The system leaded to both a poor quantity and quality of the standing army. So called Army Family System is a system founded by the Hongwu Emperor to ensure the quantity of the soldiers was amplitude. This system established that the standing army was provided by the two million “Army Families”. Each Army Family must provide one man as a soldier and did their duties generation by generation. The Hongwu Emperor thought this system would not only ensure the quality of the standing army, but also made the common people be free of the military service. But in fact, as most of the Army Families were made by force, they would always escape to avoid the military service (Note 2). So from the early years, this system began to lead the situation that the quantity of accrual soldiers was less than the quantity of the Army Families. Year by year, the situation gets worth. At the year of 1569, after two hundred years after the Army Family System was founded, the quantity of the standing army all over the country was only 845,000, much less than the legal quantity as 3138,300 (Note 3). On the other hand, the soldiers from the Army Family was always lack of training, so when met the enemies in battles, they even defeated without fighting (Note 4). Fourthly, the military supply system was in a similar situation with the Army Family System. The supply of the Army was from the local government instead of the state funding. As the local city was always divided into many different tax unites, the supply of a troop was always from many different places (Note 5). Since the tax unites was lacked of coordination and overall planning. The food and material supply of army was always in a poor situation. Some generals even blackmailed the local rich families for money and goods because of the poor supply from the local government. Otherwise, to ensure the army has a good fighting capability, some military goods as weapons and armors must be product in professional factories for a good quality. But the supply system means those special things were provided by the local governments, so their quality was usually not so good (Note 6). Fifthly, there were also a lot of problems in the military official promoting system. Firstly, the standard of a good military leader was not his military strategy and experience; it was his courage and strength. Secondly, they mean ways to promote a military leader were military examination and heritage. Heritage was the most common way to produce a military leader. Another way is to take the military examination. But the examination tested only the Wushu and Confucianism texts (Note 7). As most of the generals of Ming were always very stupid (Note 8), the emperors and high class officials always believed that when the war breakouts, the generals need to be leaded and guided by the civil servants (Note 9). 2. The Tumu Crisis Caused by the Military System 2.1 The History of Tumu Crisis In the year of 1449, the Oirats Tribe beat other Mongolia tribes and united Mongolia. The Oirats attacked Ming boundary on the pretext of the bad treated of its envoys in Ming. And Ming army lost the battle in Datong. The Imperial Government was shocked by the news and the Zhengtong Emperor decided to fight the Mongolia by himself with his half million soldiers. But the Imperial army also lost serious of battles in the boundary. The Imperial army was terrified by the Mongolia army and decided to retreat to Beijing. But because the Imperial Army changed the retreat plan for many times and wasted too much time, the Oirats army caught up the Ming army and put a Ming troop with 50 thousand soldiers to rout. In August 14th, the Zhengtong Emperor and the front troop reached Tumu Bao, a military fort located in the Great Wall and just 35 miles away from the Xuan City. Emperor decided not entering the Xuan City for waiting for the impedimenta in Tumu Bao. But at night the main force of the Oirats also arrived at Tumu Bao and surrounded the Ming army. To make things worse, the Oirats Army also occupied the river and cut off the water supply of Ming army. The soldiers of Ming felt thirsty and tired after a long time fighting. The next day, the Oirats negotiate with Ming for peace and the Ming army thought the war had stopped and began to move their camps to the river for water. But the Oirats troop suddenly appeared and attacked the moving Ming soldiers. The terrified Ming soldiers threw their weapons and armors and ran away. The Oirats chalked up a great victory and even captured the Zhengtong Emperor (Note 10).
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